Warframe: Basmu build guide

Basmu is one of Warframe's lesser-known battery guns, sporting two diverse firing modes and a healing gimmick that makes it a 'flavor weapon' more than anything else. While it cannot compete with the meta weaponry in terms of damage, mid-game players who manage to snag it during an event can get some good use out of it.

In this Basmu build guide, we will go over all of the weapon's mechanical quirks, and how to best utilize them with optimal mod setups.

Basmu mechanics, stats, and firing modes: What kind of performance should you expect?

Basmu has two firing modes with sneaky benefits for both (Image via Digital Extremes)

For an event-gated weapon, Basmu is not as powerful as some other weapons you can unlock in Mastery Rank 11. Its base damage is quite low, and it does not do well with crits without extraneous support.

The only innate asset the weapon's got going for it is a decent status chance. This alone can be a good redeeming quality, as a status application on beam weapons double-dips into multishot.

Nevertheless, in a game where the meta tends to slant in the way of area damage capacity, Basmu is far from a top-tier weapon. You will only like it for its unique traits, which include:

Fast-recharging battery ammo.
Two firing modes, one of which is a chaining beam.

By default, Basmu is an auto-recharging battery weapon, where you will recharge to full at a rapid rate as long as you don't run out of ammo. If you do hit 0 ammunition, you will have to wait for two seconds before it starts recharging.

However, during a full reload, Basmu also sends out 'Pulses' that damage enemies and give you life-leech based on the number of enemies around you. This can be used to good effect if you have a decent Health-tank Warframe like Qorvex.

The two firing modes have some unique mechanical advantages. These are:

The default firing mode is an automatic-trigger projectile fire, dealing Electric damage on direct contact. However, it also deals a secondary pure-Heat tick of radial damage to the first target it hits.
The alternate firing mode shoots two held-trigger beam attacks that deal Electricity damage and chains to five enemies, granted enemies are less than seven meters apart.

Here's the stats for each firing mode:

Stat	Primary Fire (Auto-Trigger)	Alternate Fire (Beam)
Damage and Damage Type	39 (Electric) + 19 (Fire)	12x2 (Electric)
Critical Chance	15%	2%
Critical Damage	2.0x	4.8x
Status Chance	29%	30%

How to get Basmu in Warframe

To get the Basmu blueprint directly, you will have to wait for one of Warframe's events. This includes annual seasonal events like Nights of Nabreus (Halloween) and Star Days (Valentine's), although Basmu has also appeared in many Operations:

Scarlett Spear
Orphix Venom
Gargoyle's Cry
Belly of the Beast

If you didn't miss these Operations, rest assured that Basmu will appear again as a claimable reward in future ones. Alternatively, you can also get the Basmu blueprint from other players via trading.

Also Read: Warframe Belly of the Beast Operation guide

Warframe Basmu build with pure status, Viral+Electric (4-Forma)

Basmu can deal decent damage with DoT (Image via Overframe)

These are the mods used:

Serration
Malignant Force
Galvanized Aptitude
Hammer Shot
Primed Cryo Rounds
Primed Bane mod
Galvanized Chamber
Vile Acceleration
Arcane: Primary Merciless

On this Basmu build, we keep the Electricity and Heat base for Basmu's primary fire and add Viral on top. The status chance is high enough to reliably cast 10 stacks on viral on an enemy within half a magazine while casting some Heat and Electricity DoT.

Serration is still needed with Primary Merciless, as the initial base damage boost is required to get your initial kills. If you are using a base damage-buffing ability like Vex Armor, you can use a fire rate mod on this slot instead.

The DoT effects benefit from double-dipping scaling through faction damage multiplier mods, but you have to use the right one. If you don't want to bother with swapping faction damage mods, an alternative is replacing the V-Forma with a D-Forma and using the new Elementalist mod added in the Jade Shadows update.

Basmu's Riven Disposition is quite high, so you can invest in a Riven with some of the following stats:

Multishot
Status Duration
Fire Rate
Faction Damage
Electricity Damage
Toxin Damage

Warframe Basmu build for Crits with alt-fire (4-Forma)

Basmu can do well with crits, but only if you have additive crit buffs (Image via Overframe)

The Basmu build can also be tailored for a more crit-focused playstyle. You also do not need to re-Forma, allowing you to have both builds shown here on different loadout slots.

These are the mods used:

Serration
Malignant Force
Galvanized Aptitude
Hammer Shot
Primed Cryo Rounds
Vital Sense
Galvanized Chamber
Vile Acceleration
Arcane: Primary Merciless

With this build, the alt-fire of the Basmu gets a massive 13.4x Critical Damage multiplier. However, its base critical chance is too low to leverage based on mods alone. Instead, we need to rely on ways to obtain flat or additive critical chance. The following are some options you can try to mix and match:

Citrine's Crystallize ability provides guaranteed red crits, giving you the biggest bang for your buck.
Harrow's Covenant grants an additive critical chance bonus.
Adarza Kavat's Cat's Eye buff grants additive critical chance.
Smeeta Kavat's Charm buff can potentially get you a 200% fixed critical chance.
Arcane Avenger is the most reliable loadout-agnostic way to get additive critical chance boost, so long as you can tank hits from the enemy.

Check out other guides on this game from Sportskeeda:

Check How to increase Mastery Rank in The First Descendant

Edited by Dinesh Renthlei